You are allowed to be not ok, and to tell people you are not ok. People have a lot of compassion, and I've found that just having someone understand and acknowledge that I am in a desperately bad place, and there's nothing they can do to help me, but they wish they could... that comforts me. To have someone take a little time out of their life to witness my suffering, that eases it, even infinitesimally.

I checked with Nads to see if she wanted me to post on her behalf to keep you guys updated so here's the quick update on Mr. Nads (that name oddly makes me smile--I'm so immature).

His swelling was up and then down and has stayed down and there is no bleeding in the brain. Doctors are evaluating him to take him off the respirator. They made him do a C-PAP test to see how his breathing is on his own and he may have been a tad freaked having to do that. But hopefully that means he's off the gadgets and gizmos soon. The more he responds is a good sign.

My uncle had a stroke in his forties, as well. It's been about ten years, and he's doing fine. Sometimes his speech is a little slow, but other than that, we haven't seen any bad lasting effects.

Nads and Mr. Nads, I think about you guys every day and check here to see how y'all are doing. We were up by you guys yesterday (had Christmas in Cookeville with my brother and his kids). Still sending positive thoughts your way!

Obviously this is not as bad as Mr Nad's Stroke, but I want to tell my experience with brain damage, as an illustration that synaptic pathways can be consciously worked onto change the state of your brain, even if the NUMBER of neurons you have doesn't change/keeps reducing. I'm sorry I don't feel up to telling the longs story.

In 1998 I had a massive and immediate reaction to a common SSRI, even though it's side effects were NOT supposed to be permanent, I came off it after I developed an extremely incapacitating stutter. The stutter stayed with me. It took me three years of slowing my speech right down and thinking hard about it to gradually reduce, and finally eliminate the stutter. I still now relapse into a very bad stutter when I'm very emotionally upset, and sometimes when my body is very tired. So basically it took me three years to retrain myself how to talk, and I consider myself fully healed in that department. The relapses on special occasions are a small price, and are actually useful in telling me and others how very upset I am about something, or how wasted my body is.

As well as the stutter I had started with extremely loud and prolonged Tourette's like symptoms whenever I had flashbacks, and I flashbacked incredibly more often than I used to. Often once every two minutes for hours on end. The Tourette's like symptoms were mostly verbal, but sometimes physical. When I just tried hard to suppress my vocalisations, they'd sublimate into convulsive physical motions instead, which were often dangerous to anyone sitting with me or lying next to me. The verbalisations started out for months as loud inchoate howling/screaming, and as I worked on controlling them, turned into loud swearing, and then largely settled into exclamations of "I HATE ME!". Occasionally (for an amount of occasionally considering they were happening every two minutes) I would spew out strings of swearwords instead. My current partner's favourite exclamation ever was "Slutmonkey".

Push-to-talk is SO my friend.

I considered it a personal triumph when I turned "I HATE ME" into "I HATE YOU". However that was even more psychologically wearing on the people I lived with. And there is no doubt my symptoms took a massive psychological toll on the people I lived with. Just trying hard to suppress these flashbacks or verbal reactions to them did ameliorate them, but not really by that much. It turned out that doing "Mindfulness" exercises for ten minutes a day reduced them by 95%. "Mindfulness" is very like a particular set of meditation exercises. If I don't do them every day, my flashbacks and Tourette's-like vocalisations/motions start to increase again in number and severity. I've got them down to the point where all I do when I flashback sometimes is wince heavily and curl down on myself a bit. I turned "I HATE YOU" into "I love you!". It doesn't come out always as "I love you", as it is sometimes still a squeak of pain, or a string of swearwords, or back to "I hate me". However, so far I have my partner fooled that my tourette's exclamations of "I love you!" are voluntary declarations of love aimed at him. I decided not to disillusion him on that one, and that makes us both more happy and relaxed.

He's off the respirator now because he ripped the **** thing out himself last night, haha. That took guts. I don't know if I'd be able to do it. He can whisper now and he told me this morning that he'd just had enough so he yanked it out. Said it hurt like **** to do it and as soon as he'd done it, he was like "oh ****, what have I done??" But the nurses responded to the alarm, brought in one of those carts with the breathing mask on it and put that on him until his breathing was less labored. Now he's also off the Propofol and he ate some applesauce this morning. Hopefully soon he'll be out of ICU.

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.

Mr. Nads is still alert. Today he got cleared for a liquid diet. He thought he wanted spaghetti but when he realized chewing crackers in applesauce hurt his head, he was ok with soup. And he's giving the nurse a hard time and demanding a bath. He's almost back to normal mentally.

I'm not going to post every update she sends out, but I thought a liquid diet was appropriate to talk about since the New Year festivities are coming up and most everyone will be partaking in some libations.

The hubby is now in a regular room and off all machines. Now we just have to get him on a solid diet and get his strength up some so he can start his therapy. They've not given a time frame, but if he improves enough, they'll do at home therapy with him. Yay!

An update! Mr. Nads is much better health-wise. He had that whatsit-scan where they check the blockage in your arteries today. One artery in his neck (not the carotid) is almost fully blocked. But the other one on the other side of his neck swelled to compensate. So the doc isn't concerned. He said Mr. Nads should be able to stay on aspirin and be just fine. Also, in the next day or two we're really hoping they move Mr. Nads to the therapy center at <OMITTING FOR PRIVACY>. We've GOT to get him mobile again.

Called the hosptial on my lunch break and they said Mr. Nads was being moved to the rehab center later today. Yay! So I'm scarfing down some lunch, grabbing a few things he'll need and heading to the hospital so I can go with him. Best news ever!

Glad to hear he's getting stronger. I wouldn't put too much stock in time-frame's the doctors might give. It's good to get an idea but more importantly as long as he's improving that's all that matters. If this week is better than last week, that's a good thing.

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Some people are like slinkies, they aren't really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

So the husband guy has been in rehab since Friday afternoon. He had his first session yesterday, and today (Sunday) was an off day. He said they tried to kill him yesterday, haha. But they must have done something right. He sat up on the edge of his bed by himself today, he was out of that **** hospital gown when I got there and in pj bottoms and a t-shirt, and he took a sit-down shower on his own, he just needed help getting there. His balance is great. He also sat on the edge of his bed to eat his lunch. No wobbling or leaning. He's just extremely weak. And I think most of that weakness is just from being in bed so long. I don't think this stroke has affected him nearly as bad as we were afraid it had.